In another forum, I saw this link to an explanation of the enhanced retroreflection near the shadow of the rovers' mast head, as demonstrated in thumbnail:


Larger Image

They call it an opposition effect or "dry heiligenschein" -- which is just so fun to say.

In my own experience, I was familiar with such an effect viewing dew on grass, but, of course, dew was pretty much off my list for an explanation of similar on Mars, so I was glad to read about this.

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I think I'll start using it as a cuss word: Oh, heiligenschein!"

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

The strongest I have ever seen it in was in the very dry dust (no rain for months) in a baseball field across the street from my house.